Byron Rich ART Habens somewhere in between as the case most often seems . That was a bit of a novel , so I ’ ll stop .
You are a versatile artist and I have highly appreciated the cross-disciplinary feature that marks out your multifaceted production and I would suggest our readers to visit http :// www . byronrich . com in order to get a synoptic view of the variety of your projects . While superimposing concepts and techniques from apparetly opposite spheres , as Art and Science , and consequently crossing the borders of different artistic fields , have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different viewpoints is the only way to achieve some results , to express specific concepts ?
I am in no way a student of the sciences . I cribbed a phrase from Paul ( sorry Paul !), that being “ impassioned amateur ”. I learn what I need to as I go . Sometimes I play with pseudo-science to point out the lack of scientific criticality and knowledge that seems to permeate contemporary culture , and sometimes I will get a little further into the sciences ( still only dipping my toe into the vast expanse that science is ). Science is important to me without question . I ’ m absolutely fascinated by it . I wish I had the mind for it .
I firmly believe that scientists are some of the most creative people that exist . They are asking profound questions in pursuit of some kind of ultimate answer to the ultimate questions about who we are , where we came from , and what is possible in an unimaginably incalculable universe . People like Carl Sagan , Neil Degrasse Tyson , and Stephen Hawking have made some of these concepts accessible to me . The unselfish pursuit of scientists into answering some of the most complex questions is remarkable to me , so their willingness to articulate some of these massive notions into a form that I can digest is something I am deeply thankful for .
Artists can come at some of these questions that scientists are asking relatively unburdened by convention . At the intersection of Art and Science is where the cultural contributions can be most fully made in my estimation . Science will always be a borderline mystical practice to most people , much in the same way art making is . The performative nature of the lab parallels the performance that occurs in an artist ’ s studio , at least to those outside the disciplines . When these performances collide , the ethical and philosophical boundaries of technologies , sciences , and the public policy relating to them , can be most deeply explored . The true innovators of this field are people like Paul and Steve , Adam Brown , Julian Oliver , and Ionat Zurr and Oron Catts of SymbioticA . They are asking the most important questions , and contributing to culture in a way that I aspire to . They exist as artists on the boundary of reality and fiction , probably my favorite realm to inhabit .
I would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from IMMOR ( t ) AL , an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article . What has at once caught my attention of this work is the way it brings to a new level of significance an impressive quantity of data : I think it ' s important to underline that your process does not forces concepts to relate that would otherwise be unrelated . Rather , you provide them of a stage of semantic amplification that extracts meanings where the viewers could recognize just a huge quantity of data to be deciphered . Would you like to introduce our readers to the genesis of this project ? In particular , how did you manage the collaboration with to John Wenskovitch and Heather Brand to developed the initial idea ?
IMMOR ( t ) AL is a strange project in many ways . It ties together rather disparate ideas and technologies into a semi-coherent form . The basic idea came about when I attended an incubator work shop in Buffalo , NY with Ionat and Oron . It was held at Big Orbit
21 406
Special Issue